Monday, June 4, 2007

The ‘Yacub 7 Ali’ hoax

An elaborate racial hoax has been simmering on the Web for several months. It involves “Prophet Yacub 7 Ali,” a supposed black cult leader who teaches his followers to inflict skin cancers on white people… with just a look.

Wait, don’t laugh. There’s a much uglier underside to this hoax.

These so-called “Negro Sun Worshippers,” the bogus “journalists” writing about them, and the Internet posters calling attention to them have been appearing in online forums wherever brutal, real-life black-on-white crimes are being discussed.

The posters – masquerading as black men, and using various pseudonyms – celebrate black violence against whites. They point readers to a website promoting the “Sexiest & Hardest Ghetto Black Male Felon Bragging Rights Competition.”

In one case, they’re spreading a grotesque lie about a white female murder victim. (Basically saying she asked for it, out of extreme sexual masochism.)

It all seems calculated to stir up anger amongst white folks.

Sure enough, some gullible whites are swallowing it.

The hoaxsters have inserted themselves most visibly into online discussions of the “Knoxville atrocity” – the rape, torture and murder of Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom last January, for which five black suspects have been charged.

Yesterday, the American Renaissance website – run by a highly educated, media-saavy white nationalist named Jared Taylor – got suckered.

American Renaissance offers a daily list of weblinks on topics such as non-white immigration, non-white crime, affirmative action and political correctness. Usually AmRen links to mainstream media outlets – Washington Post, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Associated Press, etc.

Not so with this story on Thursday: “Knox Blacks Celebrate Carjacking Rapists in ‘Party.’ ”

For this one, American Renaissance links to NowPublic.com – a so-called “participatory journalism site” where anybody can post anything. No oversight whatsoever.

Here’s what the story says:

“St. Nicolas Thief, president and founder of Black Poverty Speaks, along with many local Knoxville blacks… has organized a social action protest celebration championing Lemaricus Davidson and Letalvis Cobbins” – two of the accused slayers of Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom.

“ ‘We’re coordinating the celebration to to jive with the march angry whites are planning in memory of the victims…,’ Thief, who is currently stationed in Knoxville, said.

(“St. Nicolas Thief” is one of the dubious monikers that pops up on websites and blogs associated with “Yacub 7 Ali.”)

Here’s how AmRen readers reacted to this “news” article:

“Outrageous. They are ‘celebrating’ a horrendous crime that defies description. This is the black mindset, we must be aware of how these people think to protect ourselves.”

“Interesting insight into the mentality of Blacks. This is very much an accurate portrayal of how most of them think.”

“I am actually sick to my stomach. … The fate that these two individuals met is unimaginable. Now, a story of a celebration for this garbage is just too much.”

“What can one expect? Blacks openly celebrated O.J.’s acquittal. … This nonsense is reason # 10 million why the races should never have been together.”

“Though our leftist press won’t report it, one hopes that blacks will have their ‘party’ and many others like it. They’ll dispel a great many multicultural myths by doing so. When liberal suburbanites learn that ‘white privilege’ entitles blacks to rape, sodomize, and murder them, they might just become white nationalists.”

The hoaxsters got what they wanted. Which was not, apparently, to make white readers such as these look foolish. But to make their blood boil.

By this morning, however, a few AmRen posters smelled something fishy. One wrote: “This is obviously a hoax. Look at the names. St. Nicolas Thief?”

Another poster apparently Googled the byline on the NowPublic.com article (“Jacque-Patrick Fitzgerald”) and found a May 9 story titled “Black Sun Worshippers Claim Responsibility for Greensburg Tornado.”

That piece quotes Yacub 7 Ali’s “spokesman,” Lucifer Nigaros, as giving thanks for the recent devastating twister in Kansas: “They are a wicked and vile people who live there and our prayers continue to be that God avenge us for the devastation whites caused the underprivileged in New Orleans.”

The enterprising AmRen poster concluded that “perhaps his extremely sick story about the [Knoxville] celebration should be taken with a pinch of salt.”

Who is behind this hoax? And why are they (or perhaps just a “he”) spending so much time and energy pretending to be black people who hate white people?

I don’t know. But I have been observing their mischief for weeks.

On January 11, a “Rice Whitman” posted this on the Jewish Defense League’s blog: “I am very disturbed with a new trend occuring in the New England states in the South East. Whites are being placed under curfew by blacks who maintain the ability to reradiate ultraviolet light and cause skin cancer. …

“Please focus attention on, a ‘Prophet’ Negroes are calling Yacub 7 Ali and his New Negro Movement. Do a Google search. … Thanks.”

A variation on the theme appeared on February 12, when “Parker Whittman” posted this on his LiveJournal blog: “Good and descent citizens of Savannah are walking amongst a new evil man and a new evil group of people. Evil is Evil! I will be the first man in this community to state aloud I have developed skin cancer and believe it to be a result of the radical blacks of this new negro sun worship sect. …”

All of these blogs debuted in February or April except for the “Waldorf Carathers” blog, which popped up last December. Back then, it was focused on a different black-on-white crime – the “Savannah Debutante Murder.” (Three black men were convicted of killing Jennifer Ross during a robbery the night of her debutante ball.)

All of these blogs deal with nothing else but the Yacub 7 Ali cult or a celebration of black-on-white violent crimes.

And, of course, there’s no mention of the existence of a “Yacub 7 Ali” anywhere on the World Wide Web except for this interlocking network of blogs, websites and discussion-board trolls.

Until a few days ago, the key websites of the Yacub 7 Ali hoax were www.svengalimedia.com, www.americanpatriate.com and www.yacub7ali.org. Those homepages are now inaccessible. (But here is a page from a Google cache.)